A useful aspect of content management systems is the functionality that is built into the content management system including being able to apply uniform policies over all the content managed by the system (for example, access, retention services, searching services, version control, backup, etc.). However, the ability for these services to provide to all users of the body of managed content access all the content under management can be problematic. For example, using a global search in some cases shows the existence of documents that should be kept hidden from at least some users (for example, a reduction in force plan, a merger or acquisition proposal, etc.), e.g., by limiting access to those collaborating to create and/or finalize the documents. In some cases, it would be useful for a subset of one or more users to be able to take advantage of the capabilities of the content management system with regard to accessing a specific set of content items or objects where all other users could not. It would also be useful for members of the subset to have an easy way of identifying content items or objects to which the user has access by virtue of their being included in the specific set of content items and his/her membership in a subset of users having exclusive access to the content items or objects comprising the specific set.